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December 3, 2007
Another writer has put her best words forward, trying to prove the
obvious. The title of her book tells us what we already know:
Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)
Unfortunately, though, knowing that we are a sex-obsessed culture and
witnessing the damage it does to our children will not be enough to
compel a cultural change. Politicians, academics and editors refuse
to support education that helps teach and mentor children to remain
sexually abstinent. What are they waiting for? Research, they say.
Research and evidence.
Well, here in her book Prude they get what they want. Carol
Platt Liebau is no dummy. Graduating from Princeton, she entered law
school at Harvard and served as the first female managing editor of
the Harvard Law Review. Her work as a law clerk for a U.S. Court of
Appeals Judge launched an impressive succession of legal and policy
positions spanning fifteen years.
Evidence? Politicians want research? Fine. Liebau gives them
evidence…along with logical argument…she “puts all the facts at their
fingertips,” detailing the radical sexual forces assaulting our
children.
Kate O'Beirne, Washington editor of National Review can’t say
enough about Prude. "All parents want their daughters to
be healthy and happy. Smart parents will recruit Carol Platt Liebau to
help rescue the girls they love from the destructive forces they face.
Liebau sounds an alarm we dare not ignore in her brave, groundbreaking
book."
Groundbreaking? Hardly.
The books keep coming. Each year, one or more valiant writers pull
together the facts and give voice to victims of the sexual revolution.
Each book lays out the research and the evidence. It is never
enough.
In
2000, at only twenty-three years of age, Wendy Shalit published A
Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. For her effort,
she was mocked and ridiculed. Again, in 2007, she wrote Girls Gone
Mild, drawing on 100 in-depth interviews and thousands of e-mail
exchanges with women from ages twelve to twenty eight. Shalit
documents how young women want a culture that affirms and promotes
chastity.
In
2005, Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our
Relationships, and Our Families hit bookstores. Author Pamela
Paul investigated the
"all pornography, all the time" mentality of many younger men and its
ripple effect on the culture. Her in-depth interviews confirmed what
much research shows. Pornography damages relationships, negatively
impacts libido and is highly addictive.
In
2006, Dr. Miriam Grossman penned Unprotected:
A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her
Profession Endangers Every Student.
Drawing on her ten years as a psychiatrist at the student health
service at UCLA, she is armed
with facts, evidence and research that disprove the tenets of the
liberated sex mantra preached on college campuses. No wonder that Dr.
Grossman feared professional retaliation and listed the official
author as “Anonymous, M.D.”
Dr. Margaret Meeker, a pediatrician for more than twenty years
specializing in treating adolescents, has written several titles on
teens and sex. In Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing our Kids,
she presents research on the physical and emotional consequences of
teen sex and makes these facts come alive through stories about the
teens she has treated.
These books, and many others, evidence a large body of scientific
research documenting the destructive consequences of “liberated sex”.
They support the need to restore sexual abstinence as an expected
standard for our children and to set cultural norms affirming this
goal. Research is available to show that effective abstinence
education programs are doing just that.
But the facts, the research and the evidence are not enough to satisfy
the demands of those defending our sexualized culture. The facts are
never enough…for a very simple reason.
The sexual revolution in the 60s was not founded on facts, research
and evidence. It was founded to give us what we wanted. Embracing
birth control and abortion on demand, human sexual behaviors of all
kinds were defined as positive and empowering. Sexual self-control
was defined as negative and unnecessary.
These definitions are self-justifying. One cannot fight a definition
by using research. A chair is defined as a place to sit, not because
research proves it true. A chair is a chair…because I said so.
If a woman says sexual promiscuity harmed her, by the modern
definition of liberated sex, she is simply repressed. She is
immature…”because I said so.” By definition, sex is good. Liberated
sex is better.
What about a research study of a thousand women who say sexual
promiscuity harmed them? Well, they are all repressed…because
we said so. The study “proves” these women need to be treated so that
they will enjoy liberated sex.
The more we are pushed to gather evidence, the further we drift from
the truth. We can pile up research, and we can write a book. Many
will laud our efforts to restore common sense and save our young
women. But, our book, if not mocked as a puritanical tract, will be
ignored by those who hold the power to direct a cultural change.
You may have facts. Unfortunately, though, you will never have enough
facts and research. Modern definitions have been chiseled in stone:
liberated sex is good sex…and sexual restraint is bad. That’s just
the way it is…”because I said so.”
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September 24, 2004
End of Life as a Fairly Normal Person
August 13, 2007
The Real Problem with Abstinence Education
See Archives
for past editorials.
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